Much attention has been given in recent times to the reduction of pollution from oil spillage at sea. Various methods have been proposed to deal with the serious pollution problems that arise when large quantities of oil are lost from tankers or other vessels. The oil tends to float in large slicks at or adjacent the suface of the sea.
One method of removing these oil slicks is by chemical dispersion, using chemicals to break up the oil. Such techniques are well known. They are expensive to perform and are often unsatisfactory with heavy, viscid oil which tends to become even more viscid under the weathering action at sea.
Other methods are primarily mechanical, for example, collecting the oil with the aid of booms which is not practical for very large slicks or passing an endless rope of olephilic material through the slick, the oil gathered thereby being removed for disposal. Such methods so far proposed have not proved as satisfactory as we hoped and in particular it is heavy viscid oils that are most difficult to handle satisfactorily.